Yesterday’s Fiasco Didn’t Satisfy Left-Wing Dems

Politico reports that 13 left-wing Democratic Party groups delivered a letter this morning to Chuck Schumer, criticizing his handling of the Kavanaugh nomination as not sufficiently fanatical:

Progressive groups have a blunt assessment of Sen. Chuck Schumer’s work to defeat Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination: “You are failing us.”

Thirteen liberal groups have signed on to a letter, delivered Wednesday morning, that pans the minority leader’s strategy of stopping President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. They say that “the Democratic Party’s progressive base expects nothing less than all-out resistance to Trump’s dangerous agenda,” and question whether Schumer is delivering it.

The letter is here. The signers say Schumer isn’t trying hard enough to get all 49 Senate Democrats to commit to voting against Kavanaugh:

Holding 49 Democrats is the only way we can succeed in pressuring flippable Republicans like Sens. Collins and Murkowski to listen to the Mainers and Alaskans who are demanding that they vote no on a judge who will deprive women control over their own bodies. If you hold your caucus together, you force them to have to make a real choice, with very real consequences for their constituents. If you fail, you let them off the hook.

Your strategy to sacrifice the Supreme Court in order to hold Democratic Senate seats is not only strategically and morally wrong, it will fail. It is wrong to assume that a no vote on Kavanaugh puts red-state Democrats in electoral peril or somehow protects them from Republican attacks.

I suppose Schumer is playing a waiting game. If he thinks a Republican senator may vote no, he will go all-out to whip his 49 Democrats. On the other hand, if it becomes clear there are no Republican No votes, he mostly likely will release a few red-state Democrats who are up for re-election this year to vote Yes. Such a pragmatic strategy is not enough for the signers of the letter, who I suspect represent a majority of the Democratic Party’s base: